Masking with Salt Flakes

[BurningQuestion]

Hello all,

 

I got turned on to salt flaking about a year ago when I saw Chris Clayton's large scale Ultramarine (took silver in the open category at GD'09). The basic premise is using salt+hair spray to make a mask allowing one colour to break through another. Below are the steps I went through for on my Deathdealer project. It’s particularly good for rust, paint chipping etc...

 

Stage 1: Very roughly paint up the first coat which is the one you want to have breaking through, reds/oranges, metals etc… I used a basic imperial drab green comprising of base colour + single shade & highlight and a wash. You’ll be building up a lot of layers so remember to keep the paint thin.

 

http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu145/Pyre-Studios/Deathdealer/P1250226.jpg

 

Stage 2: Once dry spray the required area with hair spray. 2-3 quick blasts from about 12” away should do it. Immediately drop on the salt flakes. The process is a bit tricky as you only have some control as to where the blasted things land... Leave it dry for around 10 Min's.

 

http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu145/Pyre-Studios/Deathdealer/P1250230.jpg

 

Stage 3: Once dry I spray on your top coat i.e. the actual colour you want the model. You may also want to spray on a wash. Avoid brushing where possible as the salt will come off quite easily. In this case I sprayed the model black and once this was dry I brushed the salt off revealing the original colour below.

 

http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu145/Pyre-Studios/Deathdealer/P1250232.jpg

 

Stage 4: Use a sculpting tool, scalpel or scourers to scrap more of the top coat off. It’s fixed to the hair spray and not the model so it comes off fairly readily.

 

http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu145/Pyre-Studios/Deathdealer/P1250233.jpg

 

Stage 5: At this stage it looks quite rough so using a thinned mix of the top coat wash the scraped area to tone down the contrasts (you can build them up with more control later). I Used a 1/1/1 mix of black/badab black/water which I over painted the majority of the original colour. This thinned mix gives a dappled effect which is quite good but you may want to make it thicker. I then touched up the edges with the original green.

 

http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu145/Pyre-Studios/Deathdealer/P1250235.jpg

 

This is a good base from which to further weather the model.

 

Hope you found this interesting,

BQ

 

edited for typo's... must learn to spell ...

[The Damned]

Thats pretty impressive for something that seems prety simple. Thanks for the tutorial!

[lostsoul]

My first reaction was "what on earth? bizarre!" and then I sat back and read with growing interest - hooked by curiosity. Gotta say its one of the strangest things I've encountered but I really liked the finished effect.